Discussion

Finding great soba in Los Angeles

Does anyone know of good soba restaurants, preferably in the WLA area? I've tried some great soba in NYC at Sobaya, and the now closed Honmura-An, but can't seem to find anything like that so far in LA. Honmura-An was amazing, but the retreated back to their store location in Tokyo, Japan only. I'm thinking home-made, hand cut soba, with many varieties of cold and hot sobas, including many types soba noodle soups... check out Sobaya's menu as an example: http://www.sobaya-nyc.com/sobayasite/...

Honmura-An was amazing. I went there frequently when I lived in NYC in the 90's. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard they had closed. Ichimiann is okay, but it's no Honmura-An. It has decent, hole-in-the-wall soba (skip the udon, though). The best soba I've had was at Otafuku Noodle House in Gardena. Exilekiss has a good article about them:

Yeah, I really miss Honmura-An. Their "soba cuisine" was like fine dining in the soba world.

I'm going to give Otafuku a try and see how it goes. I found another place on Pico in WLA called Yabu. Again, no Honmura-An, but it was good home made soba. We tried the duck soba, sansai (mountain vegetable) soba and the yamakake (mountain yam) soba - all good. Prices were reasonable, ranging from $9 to $15 for a bowl of soba. But the service was very slow that night, maybe they were understaffed.

Is it definitely handmade? Two years ago I was chatting with the owner and he said it was freshly made by machine. It felt like (really good) machine product too... very even and consistent. Maybe they changed it up...

Gonpachi at the Miyako Hotel in Torrance is light years away in terms of food and ambience from the Beverly Hills location and they make their own soba and udon. I had a kinoko (mushroom) soba there in January that was very good.

I trained a little in a soba restaurant for a little while in Tokyo and met a couple of people who supply soba supplies and equipment (specifically soba mills) to the the very few restaurants in the US that use them. As far as I know (I very likely could be wrong) Gompachi is the only place in Los Angeles that currently grinds their own soba flour. If I have overlooked any restaurant I'm apologize: Please let me know if there is another restaurant grinding their own soba when you read this. Although other restaurants in Los Angeles are making hand made soba, if the soba flour is old or not ground freshly the soba will lack flavor and aroma. I haven't weighed in on this thread because I haven't been to most of the restaurants people are mentioning, but among the ones I have been to, including Otafuku, the hand made soba had decent texture but lacked flavor and aroma compared to soba in Japan. I have nothing that came remotely close to top quality levels in Japan, which I have been told by another soba chef that Honmura-An was able to replicate. I have a Japanese friend that told me the soba at Gonpachi was very good, so I'd like to try it when I get a chance.

As a side note, the "seiro" soba at Otafuku is made with sarashina soba flour, which is very different than regular seiro soba, so you can't compare the seiro at Otafuku with other seiro because it's made with a completely different ingredient. If you are comparing seiro at another restaurant to seiro at Otafuku, order the kikouchi (100% buckwheat) at Otafuku instead. I have never understood why they don't call it by it's proper name, but I guess that's just how Seiji-San likes to do things.

I should add that I'm not saying Otafuku is bad. I eat there all the time. There isn't much of a comparison between what we have in LA and what you can eat in Japan. Serious soba fanatics in Japan debate over the quality of buckwheat from each growing region and the quality of crop from year to year. Unfortunately that's not going to be a possibility for soba fans in LA any time soon, but hopefully one day.

Otafuku used to be radiant perfection in my book. I've never been lucky enough to eat soba in Japan, but Otafuku was so many leagues beyond anything else I'd tried after years of soba-searching here and in the Bay Area and in NY... but that was back when that old soba-master looking dude was always in the kitchen. Now there's a younger generation back there, I think the same dudes that worked with the Old Master when the Old Master was around, so it's probably safe to say they were trained by him, but it's lost it's super-mega-sparkle in my eyes. It's still my favorite in the area, but it's lost its sparkle. It used to be leagues better than Ichimiann's, and now it's dropped within spitting distance... Not saying Otafuku isn't worth going to. I still drive there regularly for some of the seiro and some of the 100% buckwheat - but it isn't quite as glowing-with-holy-sparkle as it used to be.

Interesting information. I know next to nothing about soba, but I tried Ichimian several months ago and found it fairly bland (and not particularly worth the drive from West LA, although I enjoyed the sleepy ambiance of the street and the Dairy Queen next door....). Wonder if the lack of freshly ground flour had anything to do w/ that...

For people who don't eat a lot of soba I can't say that freshly ground soba will make the difference between liking soba or not liking soba, but when comparing the soba of different restaurants it's a significant factor in the final product. Of course the sauce is also something that is overlooked by most people who eat soba casually. The dipping sauce for soba is just as important as soup for things like ramen, but I don't think casual consumers see it that way. Soba fans have likes and dislikes for every variation of dipping sauce imaginable, all of which would probably taste exactly the same to anyone who eats soba less than a few times a year. I think fanaticism for soba is hard for anyone who hasn't grown up with soba to understand - even the people in Western Japan who don't eat soba that much don't pay much attention to all these factors.